


the lost and lonely harbour

by jonphaedrus



Category: Tales of Xillia
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-01
Updated: 2013-09-01
Packaged: 2017-12-25 08:27:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/950911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elize Lutus survives. It's what she does best.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the lost and lonely harbour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rethira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rethira/gifts).



Elize does not remember her parents.

This pains her less than she wants to admit.

 

 

 

Elize _does_ remember Jiao. She remembers him caring for her through the years, for most of her childhood; the father she always had and always wanted. She remembers the way he smelled. She remembers when they went from Xian Du to Hamil and she would get cold at night and he would wrap her in his coat and let her sleep on his chest. She remembers riding on his shoulders or piggyback, she remembers him caring for her when someone blacked her eye with a stone and she remembers how safe she always felt. She remembers the feel of his beard, and how his wolves would rub their faces on her hands. She remembers the lullabies he used to sing her.

She remembers watching him walk away, barely standing, covered in blood. She remembers the way her tears tasted—like salt and soot and horror. She remembered hearing the guns charging and firing.

She remembers never seeing him again and it pains her almost more than she can stand.

 

 

 

Elize remembers losing Milla twice. Both times hurt; but the first hurt more. It hurt because she was useless—again—powerless, even with all her strength and even with Teepo she had nothing to stop Milla. It wasn't like her parents, taken from her so early she didn't remember enough to care. It wasn't like Jiao, where his strength made it admirable and he had made her promise not to stop.

Milla wasn't strong enough to bear that burden. Nobody was. And that Elize maybe could have would have should have helped her but without that chance her helplessness was like bile in the back of her throat. There was something about watching someone die that made it hurt more, and she knew then she was too young for anything and everything, too young to do anything but hold tight and cry. 

The second time felt like liberating freedom, but also like plunging horror. This time there wouldn't be any going back, this time was for good. Spirits and people didn't just get to be there for each other. Spirits had to be spirits; people had to be people. The second time Elize knew nothing would be the same again, and she watched her big sister walk away, and realised that someday, she wanted to grow up to be able to stand with her back straight like Milla did.

 

 

 

Even the knowledge that Rowen has to die eventually doesn't make it any better when it does happen. He's old, older than anybody else she's ever known, and he passes away peacefully in his sleep smiling but that doesn't make it any better. It only makes it worse because it reminds her of the future—soon everybody will go, and it will just be her left. She's survived everything else in life, so why not that as well?

His funeral is somber. Two worlds of people attend. Elize holds onto Alvin and Driselle and cries and cries and cries, great wracking sobs, like her heart is shattered past anything she could possibly have rebuilt because it is. Jiao was her father, but she lost him before she knew just what it meant, she lost him before she could stop him. Milla was her sister, but Milla lost herself twice because she had to, because nobody else could. Milla didn't want any help, and didn't want to watch as the world died. Milla hadn't needed someone to mourn at her funeral.

Rowen died because he got old. He hadn't gotten a chance to make his decision. He had just ended, like everything had to end. And he wouldn't get a second chance, like Milla. He was just gone.

He wasn't her father. He wasn't her sister. He was the closest and dearest thing to her heart, and he was gone. He wouldn't be coming back. She would never respect or care for someone like Rowen ever again.

But she still stands tall and strong with her heart in pieces in her chest, her soul smashed on the rocks below (for the fourth time, but she hesitated to admit it) and steps into his shoes. 

Because he would have wanted her to, and failing him would have pained her most of all.

 

 

 

Gaius dies and Elize finds herself mourning for ways she can't explain. She had never lost any love for him, but he had been respected and cared for. He was kind, especially in his old age. 

She thinks back to the way he looked after Wingul died, and it reminds her of the way Rowen had looked after Nachtigal's death. She remembers that with Gaius goes the only other memory anybody has of Jiao before her friends met him. She knows that with her will die her father.

It only makes her ache more.

 

 

 

Alvin goes abruptly, unexpectedly. Elize had never expected that he would last, really. He was the one least likely to. 

He gets himself shot. If he had died in any other way she might have been disappointed.

Jude reminds her of the way he looked after Milla's death, only this time there is no Alvin to scream at, only Leia to hold him, keep him close and safe, and Elize to clutch his hand. Isla never was able to tell anybody where Leticia was buried, so they send Alvin off in the one place that seems best—on the Hollowmont, to be with Milla. On the Hollowmont, to be with Presa. 

Her older brother is gone, and there's a hole in her heart that she would hesitate to admit is as big as it is. He never deserved the kind of love she gave him, she tells herself. She knows it's a lie.

None of them cry. 

None of them remember how.

 

 

 

Driselle fades after that, slowly sicker and sicker. Elize's brother calls her back, and he joins her at their mother's bedside as they nurse her through her final months.

She remembers how strong Alvin had been, through his mother's death. Like it hardly bothered him. He had watched her waste away with a stoic expression, and she had only heard him cry once at night, bundled into his bedroll, so soft it was hardly there. He had never wanted comfort.

Now all she wants is comfort. This time there's enough time for Leia and Jude to arrive, enough time for them to prepare. Her mother passes away peacefully, her white hair crumpled under her head on the pillow in the bed that Elize had shared with her innumerable times as a child.

Elize and her siblings bury her quietly, with little pomp, next to Cline. As she would have wanted. Elize's brother becomes the next Lord Sheril, as strong as his uncle and namesake would have wanted him to be, but Elize is shaken by it further than she has ever been before.

If it was not for her own children, for her own life to bury herself in, she might have flung herself onto her mother's grave. Gone into the earth with her.

Elize would have, if Driselle would not have been terribly angry with her for doing it.

 

 

 

Leia is killed in a boating accident.

They do not recover her body.

Elize stops working, and does not start again.

 

 

 

Jude vanishes.

Elize knows he is gone.

She heads up the ceremony in Kanbalar, attended by representatives of both sides. She is the only one left of the original few who had pushed the world into the shape it has become. Muzét is there.

Elize cannot bring herself to speak to the Spirit, but she does walk over and hold the other woman. Neither of them says a word.

Elize can feel tears wetting her hair.

She can feel tears streaking her cheeks.

She goes on, just as she always has. Just as she always will. Because that is what she has to do.

 

 

 

When Milla comes to her in a dream, Elize knows that her time has come. She is old, now. She has lived out her days. She has weathered storms and weathered pain and come out of it both stronger and weaker—pottery, fired for too long. 

Milla is still young. Milla is just how she remembers her, beautiful, smiling, twenty years old and never-changing.

"Come with me," Milla says, smiling.

Elize smiles back, twelve years old, cradling Teepo close to her chest, takes her sister's hand, and steps forward into the light.


End file.
